In this provocative and thoughtful anthology, many voices join in illuminating the remarkably vast and varied American West. The verse collected here ranges from American Indian tribal poems to old folk songs like "The Streets of Laredo,” from country-western lyrics to the work of such foreign poets as Bertolt Brecht and Zbigniew Herbert. Here is the West in all its rich variety-the harsh life of farms and ranches; man's destructive invasion into forest and desert solitudes; the bars and bistros of San Francisco and Hollywood; Pacific surf and endless highways; the ghost towns, the poverty, and the legendary world of cowpunchers and gunslingers.
From Robert Frost's "Once by the Pacific” to Charles Bukowski's "Vegas,” from Fred Koller's "Lone Star State of Mind” to Thom Gunn's "San Francisco Streets”-the West is evoked in all its incarnations, both actual and mythic.

Foreword

ROBERT FROST (1874–1963)
Once by the Pacific
Auspex
The Gift Outright
GUILLAUME APOLLINAIRE (1880–1918)
Annie
WITTER BYNNER (1881–1968)
Defeat
ROBINSON JEFFERS (1887–1962)
Compensation
The Eye
FOLKSONGS
Me and My Uncle
Jesse James
The Streets of Laredo
The Buffalo Skinners
THOMAS HORNSBY FERRIL (1896–1988)
Bookmarks
Science Came West
BERTOLT BRECHT (1898–1956)
Hollywood
Landscape of Exile
JANET LEWIS (1899–1998)
For John Muir, a Century and More Afte His Time
TRIBAL POEMS
Chippewa: “Sometimes I go about”
Yokuts: Song of the Eclipse
Makah: Song
Hidatsa: We Made a Fire
Papago: Song of the Brown Buzzard
Dakota: Song of Reproach
Chippewa: Where the Fight Was
Pawnee: Better to Die Young
Crow: Prayer Offering
Malecite: Tale
Pawnee: Buffalo Dance Song
Chemehuevi: Love Song
Sanpoil: After Hunting
Yuma: Death Song
Sioux: “The earth is all that lives”
YVOR WINTERS (1900–1968)
The Journey
On Rereading a Passage from John Muir
John Sutter
To the Holy Spirit
BREWSTER GHISELIN (1903–1996)
Rattlesnake
Headland
KENNETH REXROTH (1905–1982)
From Andree Rexroth
—Kings River Canyon
THEODORE ROETHKE (1908–1963)
The Rose
JOSEPHINE MILES (1911–1985)
West from Ithaca
J. V. CUNNINGHAM (1911–1985)
Montana Pastoral
From To What Strangers, What Welcome
Montana Fifty Years Ago
KARL SHAPIRO (1913–2000)
California Winter
Western Town
California Petrarchan
VIRGINIA HAMILTON ADAIR (b. 1913)
Mojave Evening
Second Coming
WELDON KEES (1914–1955)
Two Cities
WILLIAM STAFFORD (1914–1998)
At the Bomb Testing Site
The Tillamook Burn
In the Oregon Country
What Ever Happened to the Beats?
Traveling Through the Dark
ANN STANFORD (1916–1987)
The Four Horsemen
CHARLES BUKOWSKI (1920–1994)
Vegas
LEE GERLACH (b. 1920)
Genesis
CHARLES FOSTER (1922–1967)
How Everything Was in the End Resolved in California
LOUIS SIMPSON (b. 1923)
West
The Redwoods
ZBIGNIEW HERBERT (1924–1998)
Sequoia
JOHN HAINES (b. 1924)
Pawnee Dust
Ghost Town
Alive in the World
Men Against the Sky
EDGAR BOWERS (1925–2000)
Someone in San Francisco
Breakages
DONALD JUSTICE (b. 1925)
Henry James by the Pacific
Banjo Dog Variations
ALAN STEPHENS (b. 1925)
After Work: Foreword
From Water Among the Stones Along the Matilija
—XVI The End of Something
—XVII Yucca Whipplei
DAVID WAGONER (b. 1926)
Tumbleweed
Fire by the River
HENRI COULETTE (1928–1989)
The Extras
From The Hermit
—Elsewhere
Quake
The Garden
JAMES WRIGHT (1928–1980)
The Frontier
Outside Fargo, North Dakota
WILLIAM DICKEY (1928–1994)
On His Way to Wyoming
Coyote’s Song
CHARLES GULLANS (1929–1993)
Los Angeles Place Names
From Many Houses, Part 1
THOM GUNN (1929–2004)
Hitching into Frisco
San Francisco Streets
BERT MEYERS (1929–1979)
From Landscapes
—The City
The Drive
MILLER WILLIAMS (b. 1930)
Pity and Fear
PETER EVERWINE (b. 1930)
Collecting the Animals
The Marsh, New Year’s Day
How It Is
COUNTRY & WESTERN LYRICS
This Ain’t My First Rodeo [Vern Gosden, Max D. Barnes and Hank Cochran]
A Better Class of Losers [Randy Travis and Alan Jackson]
Lone Star State of Mind [Fred Koller]
Faster Horses [Tom T. Hall]
GARY SNYDER (b. 1930)
Mid-August at Sourdough Mountain Lookout
Hay for the Horses
DICK BARNES (1932–2000)
Granite Intrusive
Few and Far Between
On a Painting by David Hockney
Pomona Laundresses
Shoot Out
Willie Boy
Erles
Trophy Hunt
Bagdad Chase Road in July
RHINA P. ESPAILLAT (b. 1932)
When We Sold the Tent
RICHARD SHELTON (b. 1933)
Sonora Wind
From Whatever Became of Me
Requiem for Sonora
JOHN RIDLAND (b. 1933)
Lunch at Deer Creek
Black Angel
VERN RUTSALA (b. 1934)
The Shack Outside Boise
N. SCOTT MOMADAY (b. 1934)
Fort Sill
Earth and I Gave You Turquoise
CHARLES WRIGHT (b. 1935)
Laguna Blues
GEORGE KEITHLEY (b. 1935)
From The Donner Party
—Land Logic
ROBERT MEZEY (b. 1935)
In Texas: Variation on a Theme of Borges’
LUIS SALINAS (b. 1937)
My Fifty-Plus Years Celebrate Spring
STEVE KOWIT (b. 1938)
Jacumba
LAWSON FUSAO INADA (b. 1939)
Utica, North Platte
GLOVER DAVIS (b. 1939)
The Eagle
TED KOOSER (b. 1939)
Abandoned Farmhouse
Mrs. Jones:
Country-Western Music
A Summer Night
RON KOERTGE (b. 1940)
Road Kill
Ruidoso, N. M.
OLIVIA SIMPSON ELLIS (b. 1941)
Looking West
Signing Your Life Away
MICHAEL SHEPLER (b. 1942)
Diary of a Lost Girl
Out There in the Dark
C. G. HANZLICEK (b. 1942)
Moment
B. H. FAIRCHILD (b. 1942)
The Men
Brazil
NANCY WARE (b. 1942)
No Name
MICHAEL CREAGAN (b. 1944)
Taking a Walk on Sunday
LARRY LEVIS (1946–1996)
The Poet at Seventeen
GREG PAPE (b. 1947)
Winter Night Under Black Mountain
R. S. GWYNN (b. 1948)
At Rose’s Range
TIMOTHY STEELE (b. 1948)
A Shore
LYNN EMANUEL (b. 1949)
One Summer Hurricane Lynn Spawns Tornados as Far West as Ely
DAVID ST. JOHN (b. 1949)
Chapter Forever
TIMOTHY MURPHY (b. 1951)
Buffalo Commons
The Last Sod Busters
“It is Very Far North . . .”
The Failure
JAMES GALVIN (b. 1951)
Not So Much on the Land as in the Wind
Three Sonnets
SUZANNE LUMMIS (b. 1951)
Notes Taken at Ocean Beach, San Francisco
Poem Noir
Earthquake
ALBERTO RIOS (b. 1952)
Wet Camp
Spring in the Only Place Spring Was
MARK JARMAN (b. 1952)
The Supremes
GARY SOTO (b. 1952)
Saturday at the Canal
SUZANNE DOYLE (b. 1954)
Heart’s Desire
JOE BOLTON (1961–1990)
Laguna Beach Breakdown
The Lights at Newport Beach
Days of Summer Gone
Acknowledgments